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Nintendo's Wii U cut to $239 at Target

Target has discounted the Nintendo Wii U Basic console and a number of Wii U titles. The white Wii U Basic unit is on sale for $239.99, down 20 percent from its normal price of $299.99. The black Wii U Deluxe unit is still $349.99, but a bundle with the Deluxe console and New Super Mario Bros U has been discounted to $390.00.

Nintendo Land and Wii U Sing Party are on sale for $39.99, while Assassin's Creed III, Epic Mickey 2, FIFA Soccer 13, Madden NFL 13, and Rabbids Land are down to $29.99.

Target is not the only retailer to lower the price of the Wii U, which has had some trouble finding a substantial audience. Earlier this month, UK supermarket chain Asda lowered the price of the Wii U Basic and Deluxe to £149 and £199 respectively. The price has since returned to normal, but Asda's online store has both consoles listed as out-of-stock. In fact, neither system is listed in Asda's consoles and bundles category.

3.45 million Wii U consoles have been sold worldwide, with only 390,000 of those units sold since December 31, 2012.

The problem still remains - what difference is it offering to the audience? In a market that people already have tablets and other gaming consoles, they need to find a way to convince people that this is something they want. Streaming games onto the tablet is fine, but the lack of multi-touch does not help. An exclusive Angry Bird might help, or even Sugar Crush Saga on the gamepad.

Also really 32 GB is not sufficient to last another generation in terms of storage unless they are really not serious about online delivery of products.

The Wii U Basic hasn't had any such allure since Nintendo launched in November. There's always this argument of, "Well, for fifty bucks more..." that continually exists. Retailers lower the prices of consoles all the time in random, flash sales. I don't think that it should be particularly damning for the U that its price has been lowered, more like a coincidence. It's sort of like company stock going up and down after big press conferences -- this kind of stuff happens all the time, it's just that we only choose to make notice of it when something considerably bad - or good - is happening.

So it looks like Amazon sales increased by a good few hundred percent after the Xbox One announcement.

Now this could be an anomaly, could be customers getting all excited for next gen or it could be a sense that there's no need to wait out for Microsoft's offering. Of course, the actual sales increase may not be that significant in the real-world, but its interesting none the less.